Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Hard Mode Corrupter Zero Strategy

Corrupter Zero is the fourth boss in Dread Fortress, the first of the new Oricon raids in The Old Republic. On Hard Mode, it's a bit of a blocker. My group beat it for the first time last week after a few weeks of wiping. Our strategy is a bit different than the standard strategy, so I thought I'd post about it. I contributed a fair bit to the design of this strategy, and I'm rather proud of it.

The standard strategy and boss abilities can be found at Dulfy. This is for the 8-man version.

Rationale:

The key to this fight is handling Concussion Mine. Concussion Mine is a debuff the boss puts on a random player. The debuff starts stacking every second and doing a short-range damage pulse every second as well. As stacks increase, the damage from the pulse increases. The debuff goes away when a pulse hits the boss.

Basically, your raid and tanks cannot afford to take the third or higher pulse of damage. It just stresses healing and everything goes badly from that point on. Ideally, the very first pulse (the lowest damage one) is the pulse which hits the boss. This strategy is focused around the idea of eliminating Concussion Mine as a mechanic you need to think about. Ideally, you should not need to watch your debuff bar for Concussion Mine at all.

Basic Strategy:

1. Tank the boss in the center of the room. Everyone stacks in melee range of the boss. You can also have everyone stack in the center and the boss be tanked just off the center. You don't need to worry about facing the boss away.

2. Tank swap on Heavy Slash. Heavy Slash knocks the current tank away, so if the second tank taunts while it is casting, the boss should stand still. Tanking on Heavy Slash also keeps the tank debuff stacks low.

This positioning eliminates Concussion Mine as a mechanic. Concussion Mine goes out, the first pulse is guaranteed to hit the boss, and the debuff drops off right away. As well, being in the center of the room means that the ranged can reach all the adds without moving.

3. Burst the Elite add first. When the adds spawn, drop large AoE so the ranged gets aggro over the healers, and then burst the elite add first, interrupting his ability. Your ranged should not have to move.

We are ranged-heavy, so I am not precisely sure how melee should play this. You could leave one melee on the boss. If the melee is on adds, they should save their speed boost or leap for Concussion Mine (run out to the adds at normal speed). Then they should jump back to the boss as soon as it starts casting, rather than waiting to see if they get the debuff.

We do have one tank go out to the adds and aoe taunt to get a little bit of aggro before he comes back to the boss.

4. Run out of Anti-Gravity Field. If you see a red circle, run out of it. Run back in as soon as the cast is finished. This ability is on a strict timer, which makes it predictable. The first anti-gravity field will occur 1 minute into the fight, when the boss changes from ranged to melee. The second anti-gravity will come 30 seconds later (at the 1:30 min mark). Then there are no anti-gravity fields until the next range to melee change at 3 minutes, then at 3:30.

That's the general pattern, once when he changes from ranged to melee, and then 30 seconds later. There will be a concussion mine right before the change, so wait for the mine before running out.

5. Avoid the really big laser at the end. Run to a corner, see where he lands (use the mini-map) and then run to the channel where he isn't. Then switch channels as soon as the laser finishes. Try to kill the adds if you can, but avoiding the laser is key. Once the lasers are done, you can mop up and finish the fight.

Final Notes:

Note that this strategy does mean that the raid takes extra AoE damage from the various other mechanics like the Missile Barrage or Massive Slam. Your raid should use defensive cooldowns as appropriate, especially during Missile Barrage. However, your healers should be able to heal through this. In exchange for taking this damage, you minimize damage from Concussion Mine. What we found was that extra ticks of Concussion Mine was what led to wipes.

I think someone in my guild took a video of our kill. If so, I'll link it when he uploads it.